


no sleep in heaven

by heatherchandler (red_handedjill)



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Child Abuse, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mourning, Past Relationships, Post canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-15 13:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4609272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_handedjill/pseuds/heatherchandler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nights they spend crying and the days they spend fucking.</p><p>OR, they don't really get over what happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no sleep in heaven

When Wendla Bergmann is dead by morning, she screams at the angels from the snow. There's ether down her throat and a fire in her belly and all of a hell she can't believe in in her eyes. She knows anemia is bullshit but her throat is too hoarse to scream at Frau Bergmann.

She leaves tears in the snow for the girl who didn't grow up.

(Then she prays the angels will take her too.)

* * *

Melchior waits in the graveyard, the knife somewhere in the snow. "All that's known," he spits out, "in history and science, overthrown, at school and home by blind men — "

"You doubt them, and soon they bark and hound you." He knows that voice, sweet and soft.

"Ilse," he whispers, "Ilse Neumann." It is seconds, clear blue eyes melting into his own, and then he falls to her. His head is on her chest, listening for the pounding. She isn't Wendla but her heart is a familiar sound.

_Do you hear my heart beat, everywhere you go?_

("Can we play pirates?")

* * *

 She cries upon Wendla's grave longer than he does, longing for the brown eyes and the hair flying behind her in their childhood. He can hear her tears fall now. He knows it more than Wendla's heart, dead in his ears and dead in her chest.

"She won't come back, Ilse," he whispers to the crook of her neck.

"We were children," she sobs, "we were children."

They were all children, and now two of them are angels.

(Or maybe there's nothing after this.)

They don't sleep that night.

* * *

His grave is cold as the winter snow tonight. Melchior didn't walk her to it tonight. She came alone, with purple flowers for him. And then she unraveled in black stockings too thin for the season and a white dress that makes her look like a faerie queen.

 "I'm so sorry," she cries, rocking back and forth over his grave, "I — I should have known ... I was so selfish to run away. Moritz, you — you sad, sad boy, why did I ... I never even told you ...."

The boy with bags under his eyes and socks that tremble down and hair that will never change says nothing.

"I love you ... I love you ... I love you ..." she whispers to the nothingness around her.

He doesn't comfort her rocking.

"I should have stayed," she wretches, "I should have known, I should have done anything but what I did."

She cries until her hair is overcome by the night and the snow has melted against her skin, leaving a burning cold in shades of red and purple and blue like papa's hand once did. She cries until she can cry no more, like the nights her room was entered by a man who should have loved her another way. She cries until Melchior still has not come to rescue her, like in the childhood she wants to burn away from her. She cries until she is sobbing both of their names, raining down onto his grave.

The grave with the boy with a hole in his head and his heart and blood around him and looking entirely unlike him.

"It's so dark," she whispers, "so dark, Moritz ... Was this ... How you died?"

Ilse didn't expect an answer anyways.

* * *

 

He finds her in the morning, asleep and silent on Moritz's grave. He rolls her over and presses his head to her chest to listen for her heartbeat. He finds it steady and hard under her ribs. His lips press to her forehead before he pulls her curled up body into his lap. "I'm sorry," he tells her, "you were the last to see him but I ... I didn't ... It was my fault, Ilse. I was — I let him cry, I was his best friend and I didn't help him ... I'm sorry ... I killed him."

(He can never tell anyone.)

She wakes in his lap and curls into his body, her head finding his shoulder and his neck. She whispers her sins — how she heard his calls and all else she has done — and he pushes her away.

_Take that you little whore._

He hits her and she feels those suffocating hands again but she's not Wendla and she's not the little girl who sat as her papa beat her. She knows how to avoid it.

Her lips are on his, warm and burning.

(His hips rock into hers by their graves and he laughs because the Church would cry at this.)

* * *

Melchior sobs at a bar instead of a grave but the names don't change.

_Where is your heartbeat?_

Ilse sees him but she doesn't rescue him.

She owes him nothing.

* * *

Her dreams are not of the angels her mama told her of or the hell she lived in that night. Brown hair and brown eyes with a halo and wings beckon her to enter a light and the boy with the hair that never stayed flat and the socks that fell down smiles at her again, asks to play pirates.

(She wakes in a cold sweat, screeching and screeching for them.)

No one kisses away her tears.

"I love you," she chokes out.

(It would be both of theirs if they would just fucking keep it.)

* * *

They pretend all is well and she crashes her hips into his because anything is better than their graves. Once the deed is done, her heart plummets to her stomach and her papa whispers that she's his but she doesn't cry. Ilse whispers that it is a lie and Melchior holds her hand instead of questioning her.

There is small talk, of weather and Priapia. She tells him stories and he laughs where he should. They whisper all forgiven and, today, no one is dead.

He walks her home with warm hands and warmer eyes and hair that does not stay flat.

She doesn't ask to play pirates.

* * *

They stop crying one night. They pick themselves up and he takes her hand and she leads them out of the graveyard. Neither whispers a goodbye to tuck between the graves.

She kisses him before she opens her door and he closes his eyes before he walks home.

He mutters a prayer before bed for the first time in years.

(It ends with everyone he knows he loves — Moritz, Wendla, Ilse.)

* * *

His lips taste like heat and pencils Moritz chewed down and he smells like home and Wendla's favorite flowers but she pretends it is all hers. She laughs with him and she pretends they never lived and that her heart was never owned by either.

He tells himself her heart is his and his alone the same way she tells herself he is hers and hers alone.

"I can hear your heart, wherever I am."

Because they need to love someone, they will love each other.

(He whispers another prayer and ends with the same names.)

* * *

Ilse lets him unbraid her hair. She doesn't close her eyes — she can't close her eyes. The fingers are not slim enough and she cannot be a child again.

She doesn't whisper secrets but she tells him she loves him.

Wendla's name is on her lips so much she can feel her mouth an inch from hers and remember breathing gently within reach but far away. There is safety in that distance she kept.

But she kisses Melchior full on his lips anyways and lets herself fall over.

He pins her that way and she tries not to pretend it's a game of pirates she'll let Moritz win. They're bodies rock together, pressing their sins together and breathing out for each other.

"Melchi," she whispers, "Melchi." She needs to remember it is Melchior. It is no one else but him. There is no one else but him. These are not rough hands upon her or delicate fingers brushing over hers or skittish eyes longing for her.

_Melchi, I passed!_

He grits his teeth and keeps his eyes open (he's not on a hayloft and she's not bleeding onto him, no, he can't be). "Please," he begs, "please ..." He cannot go where he used to. Moritz is waiting there and he  _cannot_ go there because  _there is no Moritz._

She gasps, her hips bucking up. "Melchi!"

_Melchior!_

"Please!" He screams, ramming into her this time. She needs to say it. She  _needs_ to say it.

Ilse flinches beneath him but she says it anyways, "all is forgiven."

(It wasn't our fault.)

* * *

They play pirates. She asks him one day, before her door is closed. They play until the sun is awake again. They play until their bodies ache. They play until the memory is locked away.

(He takes her on the grass and they just lay there.)

They spend a day like that. Together. Just existing. Neither of them need to talk. Neither of them want to talk. He confessed his sins and she confessed hers, what's done is done. They've said all they can.

Her stalkings stay in the grass and the dress is up to her thigh for the entire day and it almost feels nostalgic. Except tomorrow she can take them off again without worries of the blue bruisings from her beating.

(He'll never say it but he can hear her heart beat.)

* * *

His younger brother asks him when he finally comes home, tie hung over his shoulder and jacket left on hers, when he'll marry her. He spouts bullshit — too young, still in school, her parents will never approve, yes, even though she was kicked out — to reject the idea.

"But everyone expects you to."

_There's a moment you know —_

(Moritz used to whisper of an Ilse Stiefel.)

"I'll ask when I finish school, when I have a job."

_you're fucked._

* * *

Hands intertwine down the street to whispers of their dead friends and the reformatory school and what happened to her — it's all behind them now. "Just keep going," he whispers to her. _  
_

Ilse is silent, letting him lead to the meadow.

She knows his hips will crash into hers and she will keep her eyes open so she sees no one but Melchior Gabor. As long as she feels something other than their tears for those they knew, as long as she hears something but "story time, darling," as long as she knows anything but who she was, everything is fine. Just don't think of the angels and don't unravel upon their graves.

Angels have always made her so sad.

* * *

When he is done with school, he finds a job. Reformatory school is forgotten amongst their new whispers (something about Hanschen, he's heard) and his grades speak for themselves so it is easy.

("You're going to marry Ilse Neumann, aren't you?")

He makes good on his word and asks her. She cannot say no.

(She has to love somebody, she must love him.)

They're married by autumn and Moritz's long dead hopes of an Ilse Stiefel are burnt into his soul. An Ilse Gabor is close enough, he tells himself.

It's a lie but he crosses his heart and doesn't go back to the Church.

* * *

She leaves her stockings by the riverside and he folds his hands against hers. Their game of pirates is over, she knows it. Melchior always ends them like this.

"Come back to bed, kid," he whispers to her ear. His head falls to her chest. She's breathing harder than before. "Take me inside you," he pleads, pushing her dress up.

They consummate their marriage as the sun dies and she doesn't look at the purple flowers. She whispers to his heart, "all is forgiven" and he cries because of the boy with hair that wouldn't stay flat and the girl with warm brown eyes and how he loved them both.

* * *

They move to Priapia at the first signs of spring. The sun wakes to purple flowers on two graves.

(It was our fault.)


End file.
